Former Mentor police officer now admits killing wife

PAINESVILLE -- Court records show that on Tuesday a retired Mentor police officer entered a written guilty plea to killing his wife.

Gary Stroud, 58, of Mentor-on-the-Lake, now admits that he killed his wife Diane, 53, in the fall of 2011.

Police found Diane's body in the garage of the couple's Mentor-on-the-Lake home in November after their daughter called police to report a foul smell coming from the garage that she thought was a dead animal.

A police investigation determined that Gary Stroud had lied to his children and said that Diane ran off and joined a cult six weeks earlier.

According to police, the body had been wrapped in plastic, bound with duct tape and stuffed into a sleeping bag.

Diane Stroud was a former member and council president of the Mentor-on-the-Lake Village Council. She had not been seen for six weeks.

Gary Stroud is a retired Mentor police officer. He most recently worked as a part-time special deputy for the Lake County Sheriff's Office. The department laid off Stroud in September 2011 due to budget cuts.

Gary Stroud has been charged with murder, gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He pleaded not guilty Dec. 6 and has been held in the Lake County Jail in Painesville on $1 million bond since then.

Stroud had been scheduled for a jury trial starting at 9 a.m. July 23.

Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph Gibson is scheduled to sentence him at 3 p.m. Aug. 8.